


Fool's Gold

by quantumfiddlesticks



Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Heavy Angst, M/M, Murder, Nines is a serial killer, Upgraded Connor | RK900 Has a Different Name, it's richard, nines is batshit crazy as well
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-04
Updated: 2019-08-04
Packaged: 2020-07-30 19:53:57
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,196
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20102722
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quantumfiddlesticks/pseuds/quantumfiddlesticks
Summary: Danny Pikeman's life was almost perfect. Sure, it had its ups and downs just like anyone else, but he'd say it was pretty good so far.When he encountered the deadliest serial killer in recent memory by chance and completely fell head over heels, though, he had no clue just how short that perfect life would be cut. When he heard those words that sealed his fate, all he thought was: oh, what a flirt."Has anyone ever told you that you have absolutely beautiful eyes?"





	Fool's Gold

**Author's Note:**

> CONTENT WARNING: THIS ONESHOT CONTAINS AN EXTREMELY GRAPHIC DESCRIPTION OF A MURDER AND FEATURES ONE VERY, VERY UNHEALTHY CHARACTER. IF YOU ARE TRIGGERED OR MADE UNCOMFORTABLE BY THIS CONTENT, PLEASE DO NOT READ THIS WORK. 
> 
> STAY SAFE, EVERYONE! THANK YOU FOR YOUR INTEREST!!

Danny first met the deadliest serial killer of the last half century (at least) at the gay bar downtown, the night after the city’s pride parade. Of course, the bar was packed, full of rainbow flags and cheesy love-is-love slogans and wide, polished smiles. Garish outfits in every clashing color buzzed with the equal buzz of alcohol, faces made up far past what any sensible person would do normally, but this wasn’t a normal time. This was the goddamn after party!

Through the sea of pink sequins and dyed hair, Danny spotted a lone figure, face lit by the glow of a smartphone in the corner. One hand, clothed in a simple leather glove, was tucked neatly into his pocket. No slogans, no rainbows, nothing but a smooth black turtleneck and tight-fitting jeans that emphasized what was, hands down, the best ass that he had ever seen. Short, neat hair so dark brown it was nearly black fell in one strand over his forehead. The man looked up, and Danny’s heart skipped a beat at the beaming smile that he saw across the room.

Baby hairs on the back of his neck perked up, and Danny wasn’t sure if it was because of the sudden allure of this stunning stranger or because of the air conditioning, whirring with a constant drone undercutting the bumping current of loud, bassy club music. Everything was pink, purple, dyed unnatural colors by face paint and lights and colorful cocktails being handed out one after another by a bartender who was beginning to look incredibly tired.

Anyone would be tired by the constant noise and life in that bar, but this man on the wall, posing right underneath a glowing neon sign that cast stark shadows on his guarded face—just looking at him gave Danny all the night’s energy right back.

The club music seemed to stop and slow, the whirr of the air conditioner the only noise in the room as their eyes met for the first time. Every flip of hair from the dancing girl next to him, every swish of her dress and pound of her shoes seemed to move in slow motion. The smell of alcohol and so many perfumes mixed together hung heavy in the air. He’d never wanted anything as much as he’d wanted this, right now. Just move closer, Danny thought, perhaps take him in his arms, see if his lips tasted as good as they looked. 

The man’s beautiful, slim hand slipped out of the pocket, beckoning as the other hand turned off the smartphone and tucked it away. Smooth as silk, he pulled out another glove and put it on the hand he’d previously been using to text. Almost like a cartoon character floating across a room after the scent of fresh pie, Danny found himself over in the corner without much memory of how he got there. Up this close, he could really get a good look at the man’s eyes. Blue as the ocean—no, more like the sky after rain. They were guarded. Mysterious. Danny wanted to break those walls all down. He wasn’t sure if it was just the drink—god, he hadn’t even had half a glass of beer—or the atmosphere, or the fact that it was the night after the pride parade, but he found himself inexplicably drawn to this stranger. God, he didn’t even know his name.

“Richard,” purred the man, extending that hand that had roped him in like some poor fish on a hook to shake. Had he read his mind? Of course Danny took it. He opened his mouth, but his tongue felt heavy in it. He stuttered for a while, looking like a complete idiot, before finally managing to tell Richard his name.

“D-Danny. Shiiiiit, you’re… you’re hot.”

“I’m flattered.” To his surprise, Richard only smiled at the fumbling excuse for a compliment, letting go of his hand after a firm shake. His fingers trailed over his palm as he drew back.

“Has anyone ever told you that you have absolutely beautiful eyes?”

In hindsight, among survivors, this would be it. The one unifying line spoken to every one of them, the line that defined how the infamous Nine Killer chose his victims. Eyes. Beautiful eyes. Normally, they were always blue or hazel or something of the like, but occasionally, a victim would turn up who’d once possessed a pair of brown eyes. Key word: once. Richard Stern had his trademarks, and he knew them well. By the end of the night, Danny’s eyes would be in a jar on his desk, just one more pair in a sea of fifty-eight other grisly orbs.

But the night was young, and the only thing Danny’s eyes— a clear greenish-gray, by the way— were doing at the moment was taking in every bit of Richard’s beautiful face.

Perhaps, if he hadn’t seen that face, he would have had a chance to make it through the night.

The music at the bar changed, and the next thing Danny knew, the lights had blurred away as his lips met Richard’s. Those beautiful, strong hands supported his waist, legs clad in too-tight denim pressed against his own. 

“You really are… so gorgeous,” Richard purred, something strange surfacing in his unreadable gaze. Desire, Danny guessed. Desire for him. And he would be right, Richard did desire him— but not in the way he expected. No, no, not at all.

“Thanks,” Danny answered dumbly. “You’re… uh, pretty too… wow.”

Richard reached up, trailing one perfectly manicured finger up Danny’s cheek and pausing on his lips. “Why don’t I take you home tonight?” he asked, smiling. His smile was so alluring; it was like Danny was under some sort of spell. He hadn’t even had that much to drink; he was still more or less lucid before he’d spotted Richard across the room.

“Please,” was all he could manage. “That would  _ make my night. _ ” 

“Glad to hear that. Let’s go, love. Get out of this reeking mass of humanity, come on.”

He moved out, weaving through the undulating crowd like a knife through butter. Danny did his best to follow, but had to take the time to apologize to people he bumped into. Danny may have been the sort of guy to fall for a stranger just because of his mystery and gorgeous face, but he wasn’t the sort of guy to forego basic courtesy.

Richard kissed him again once they were outside, and they made out all the way into his car: a sleek black Toyota. It was fitting for him. Danny noticed some sort of strange smell in the back, noticed the fringe of a photo sticking out of the center console, but made nothing more of it. Plenty of people’s cars smelled weird. He wasn’t one to judge.

Oh, if only Danny knew just then that the smell he’d noticed had been old, drying blood. If only he knew that it was the scent of death; then, perhaps, he could have taken that moment to run and escape the psychopath with the angel’s face and the silver tongue.

But, alas, he didn’t, and he stayed in the car, and he suspected nothing the whole drive down the highway, suspected not a single thing as they pulled into Richard’s driveway to find the living room light on. Not a single doubt came into the mind of Danny Pikeman, thirty-five years old, desk-job grunt employee at an insurance company, until he twirled inside the house with the wonderful Richard Stern and spotted his ex-boyfriend lounging on the couch and playing Skyrim.

“Welcome back, Nines,” Gavin said, looking over and smiling at Richard. Richard smiled back, blowing a kiss.

Gavin Reed, thirty-six years old, barista at a successful independent coffee shop and the man many believed, a couple years down the road, to be the man who had received the very worst of the Nine Killer’s atrocities. A victim held and tortured and taken advantage of for nearly three years. Of course, the media is often wildly inaccurate, but the gritty details of that is best left to be touched on in a different oneshot. Back to the present moment, where said Gavin Reed is welcoming his lover back into the house and Danny Pikeman finally realizes that something may perhaps be off.

“I brought someone back,” Richard giggled in an entirely different tone from the sultry, attractive voice he’d used in the bar. “We’re going to have so much  _ fun _ tonight, aren’t we, my darling?”

“You’re gonna have fun tonight,” Gavin replied in a flat tone, leaning his head back and pausing his game to talk. “You know I don’t fuck with that sicko shit you do—“

“Wait!” Danny cut in. “Wait, Gavin?! What are you doing here? What do you- Richard! Are you with him?! What the fuck man? Let me out of h-“ 

Cutting in was a very bad idea, as it turned out, as Danny ended up with a cut right on his cheek from a pocket knife that had suddenly appeared in Richard’s hand.

“Don’t you dare interrupt my Gavvy,” he said with a wide-eyed smile. 

“Don’t call me that,” Gavin groaned from the couch, not really seeming to care, as Richard went on talking. His smile widened into something resembling the grin on the Joker. 

“Now, why don’t you be a good boy and go into the basement for me?” He pointed the pocket knife at Danny’s throat, tugging him close to his chest and walking him forwards to a door. He threw the door open, forcing Danny down each step until his feet, still in dirty, rainbow checkered Vans from the parade, stepped into a puddle of something wet. He looked down, stifling a scream: blood. Half-dried blood.

“Who the hell are you?!” he asked, stumbling backwards and falling into a chair in the middle of the room, situated right over a drain. Richard was on him in an instant, tying his limbs down to the point where all he could do was struggle in a futile attempt to break free. Those lips, oh so pink and kissable, leaned close to Danny’s ear. Richard’s breath smelled like blood, overwhelmingly, and a little bit like strawberries.

“I’m sure you’ve seen me on the news,” the sultry purr said. “You’re in the presence of a celebrity, love.”

It was like a lightbulb came on over Danny’s head as he looked over, panting in fear, to see the number scarred deep into Richard’s neck. A nine, messily carved. It had been there for a long time. He didn’t need to say anything after that. The look in his eyes said everything.

Richard giggled some more, stepping back and going over to a knife rack and pulling down one large kitchen knife and a sharpener. As the scrape of metal on metal echoed through the room, Danny looked around, trying to calm his pounding heart and find a way to escape.

There was a little alcove in the corner with a light and a desk, surrounded with drawings he couldn’t make up and jars full of … something. A stuffed tuxedo cat sat front and center on the desk, laying on top of what looked like an open book of some sort. It was hard to make out. He was crying already. It was hard to see through his tears.

“Let’s lay down a few rules,” Richard said over the sound of his knife sharpener. He set it down and practically danced back over to Danny, planting his gloved hands on his knees and looking him in the eyes with a grin of complete insanity. “It’s what I tell all my victims! I don’t know how much they listen, but we all need rules, don’t we?”

Danny said nothing. He didn’t move a muscle. Frozen in fear, he could only stare, eyes wide as he felt the blood drip down his cheek from the cut Richard had already made. The man’s smile faltered, and anger sparked in his eyes.

“DON’T WE?!” he shouted, grabbing Danny’s hair and pulling his head back as he raised the knife to his throat. Danny nodded, whimpering out a weak “Yes”. Immediately, Richard relaxed and got off, beginning to walk in slow circles around the chair.

“First, keep all your limbs near your person, as it’s my job to put them elsewhere if I want to!” He let out a little laugh at that one. It was no surprise that Danny didn’t find it nearly as funny. After all, the one in danger of dismemberment always is a bit more scared than the one doing the dismembering. 

“Second, try to keep your screaming down. My darling Gavvy doesn’t like it when you all scream so loud. It gives him nightmares… and we don’t want to give my sweetie nightmares, do we?” He paused in front of Danny, smiling down at him and running a finger up and down the flat of his blade. After a moment of dead silence, he tilted his head with a little frown and kept talking. “You seem to know Gavvy. How? Are you friends?”

“Ex-boyfriends,” grunted Danny, knowing better than to not answer Richard’s questions now. “Nasty breakup. I thought I’d never see him again.”

“Aw, how sad… Gav-Gav doesn’t like when I kill people he knows, but- ha, you’ve seen my face already!” He bent down, balancing back on his heels like a little kid testing their balance. “And you know my name! I’m sure, I’m sure you understand I can’t let you go, right? Right, love?”

Danny nodded as fast as he could. Maybe, despite the dire situation, he could still get out. Richard had mentioned that Gavin didn’t like the screaming… did he not like the killing, either? Maybe he could get him to help. If he just called for him loud enough… 

“GAVIN! GAVIN, HELP! HELP M—“ he let out a scream as Richard grabbed his arm and slit a cut in his bicep, lips curled up in anger.

“You will  _ not _ try and guilt trip my Gavin,” he hissed. “Do that again and I’ll make sure you die as slowly and painfully as possible, okay? Okay?” 

Gulping, trying to blink the tears of pain out of his eyes, Danny nodded again. Richard’s face lit up in a smile, and he drew back once again.

“Great! Now rule number three… have fun! It would be a shame if you didn’t enjoy this too, right?” 

The words of a crazy person. After all, though, Richard was absolutely batshit crazy, so it made sense. 

“Why are you doing this?” Danny asked in a begging tone. “What do you have to gain?”

“Oh, nothing,” Richard replied, leaning down and slowly walking his fingers up from Danny’s knee all the way up to between two of his ribs. “I have nothing to gain and everything to lose! You see, my dear brother is after me at the moment, and he just doesn’t know. He’s with the DPD! Isn’t that nice? Oh, I’m just sure he’ll be heartbroken when he finally catches me. And then there’s the matter of a life sentence… I’m prepared, I’m prepared, don’t worry!”

“Why?” Danny groaned as he shook his head, letting the tears fall. 

“Because I need to.” Richard’s smile suddenly became a somber, serious, sane look. “I’m so very sorry.” 

He tapped his finger between his ribs once, then twice— bap bap! —and then slid the knife in, twisted it, and ripped it out. The first stab wound. Danny let out a bloodcurdling scream, trying to move to cover the blood pouring out from the wound. His lung had been punctured. It was hard to breathe, and he coughed up a glob of blood, lurching forward in the chair. Richard was smiling again, and came back to stab him once more in the thigh, eliciting another scream, then batter him with cuts here and there all the way up his left arm. 

“Really, you are so very pretty,” he said, stroking his hair and leaving streaks of blood everywhere. Making sure he saw, he lifted the knife to his lips and kissed the blade, then licked some of the blood off. “Oh, and so, so  _ so _ sweet! Why don’t you have a taste? It’d be criminal to keep you from such a treat.” 

Richard Stern knew his irony just as well as he knew how to clean up a murder scene.

He stuck the knife down near Danny’s lips, ignoring the other man’s cry for help. 

“Taste, Danny!  _ Taste,”  _ he ordered in a near hiss. Weakly, Danny stuck his tongue out, barely able to lick up some of the blood. It tasted disgusting. Metallic. 

“You’re sick,” he could barely manage to growl. 

“Oh, yes, I know,” Richard responded. “I am, I am, I am… sick. So very sick. Sick in the head, sick in my sicky sicky soul! I can’t get better though, you see… I can’t change, love!” He ran his hands through Danny’s hair again, then ran back around to his front and stabbed once more in the gut. “I can’t change! I’m sorry! I’m so so so so sorry!” 

Danny was delirious from blood loss, throat aching from screaming in pain as Richard stabbed him over and over again and left a smattering of cuts all over his body, eyes filmed over with tears. Everything was swimming in his vision, from the serial killer’s face to the glint of his bloodied knife to his own mutilated body. But through what he could make out, he thought he could see a frown on Richard’s face, instead of the smile he’d worn most of this horrible, agonizing time. He thought he heard a soft sob instead of wild, hysterical laughs.

After nine deadly stabs and countless more little cuts and slits, after a deep, horrible carving of a number nine into Danny’s limp wrist, Richard dropped the knife with a clatter on the floor. He wasn’t laughing anymore, no; he was crying. His body, still so lithe and beautiful, was heaving with sobs. 

“I’m sorry,” he whimpered. “No… oh, I’m so sorry…” Stepping closer, he took Danny’s face in his hands and looked deeply into his eyes, watching as the life drained from them.

“You had so much more life ahead of you.”

A pause. 

“Please forgive me.”

One more pause.

“You’re in pain, aren’t you? I-I’ll end it. I don’t want you to hurt any longer, I’m so sorry.”

He bent down, picking the knife back up. Bringing it to Danny’s throat, he dug it in and slit it wide open. 

Within a few seconds, the light and pain faded away. Then, the sound of Richard’s cries of guilt and grief.

Greenish-gray eyes stared glassy towards the ceiling, like that of a fish in a wet market.

Blood slowly dripped into the drain under the chair.

The knife was dropped on the ground again as Richard stumbled up the basement stairs, slipping on the blood that covered him, hyperventilating and laughing again even as he cried.

“Gavin!” he was saying in desperation. “Gavin, please help me! Please!”


End file.
